HEBREW LETTER: Aleph, bull or ox; also, “to learn.” The vital motive power in an agricultural community, that which makes the crops grow. a is the sound of free breath, silent, unstructured, unconditioned.

CARD NAME: Latin follies, “a bag or sack, a large inflated ball (balloon), a pair of bellows.” Users of the word in Late Latin saw a resemblance between a bellows or inflated ball and a person who was what we would call a “windbag” or “airhead.” Fool is first recorded in English in a work written around the beginning of the 13th Century with the sense “a foolish, stupid, or ignorant person.” (This was near the origin date of Tarot.) From the Indo-European root bhel-, “to blow, swell”; with derivatives referring to various round objects and to the notion of tumescent masculinity (bowl, bull, ball, phallus, full; cf. Aleph = Ox). Contrast this name to “wisdom” (= Chokmah).

ESOTERIC MEANING: The Scintillating (or Fiery) Consciousness. It is the essence of the veil that is placed before the ordered arrangement of the Powers. Who walks this way acquires a special dignity: he can stand face to face before the Cause of Causes.

TREE of LIFE: Chokmah to Kether. (Links ‘Wisdom’ and ‘the Crown’; or Infinite Will with Unconditional Being, Chiah with Yechidah; or ‘the Father’ with ‘the Ancient of Days.’ Wisdom (which is Folly) stepping off into Nothing.)

"To advance—that means Work. Patient, exhausting, thankless, often bewildering Work. Dear sister, if you would but Work! Work blindly, foolishly, misguidedly, it doesn’t matter in the end: Work in itself has absolute virtue." -Magick Without Tears

A vision of the breath of life that permeates all living souls. The fool is so puffed up with life that they don't care about dangers or death. Life is everything, and it's an honor to be filled with it, if but for a moment.

I sense an intense electricity when I concentrate on The Fool, almost makes me jumpy/agitated. Snake going around him, as in Liber LVX Cap I - snake entwined about the heart. He is the Green Man of Spring. The life power. Pure joy. That which animates. That which experiences. The soul. Boundless. Carefree. Playful. Holding fire and something? Water? Crystal? Fire and form? Energy and Stillness? This is a sunny, happy card. It is all joy and buoyancy, and heading into the light. The Scintillating Consciousness.

In divination, I construe this card to indicate something new, novel, an adventurous beginning, or starting over. Can be about trusting one's gut. Depending on the configuration, might indicate a lack of preparation or "foolishness."

"But all we say and do, however casually, adds up to more, far more, than our most strenuous Operations. 'Take care of the pence, and the pounds will take care of themselves.'" - Commentaries of AL

The aliveness one experiences in moment's of personal discovery. Reverie. A preoccupation with what could be rather than what is. Bursting at the seams with raw enthusiasm. Ecstasy. The feeling of being unleashed and free. Pure unadulterated creative expression. Complete surrender to the joy of life, living, existence and existing. Probing into the unknown and familiar, yet soaking everything at the same time.

The image suggests a way of being in life rife with passion, enthusiasm and ecstasy. Taking the time to relish in the moment. Just being with the card and engaging with it provides a sense of heat, expansion, tumesense and swelling. Almost like being connected to an extremely powerful and inexhaustIble source of electric energy.

Abundance is present. Power and confidence are present. There's also the presence of a future, reaching back into the present and pulling one forward. It's fertile, virile. Unconditioned.

It's interesting to note the title of the path this card is attributed to - Scintillating Intelligence - the words conjure an image of a bright spark - or fuse - fizzing, gleaming, flashing - represents that tendency or ability to behold and be astonished by the spark and light of a new life or new possibility. We're bedazzaled. Time stops...so it seems. It's risky. It's challenging. It's threatening. Threatening to what is familiar and what is "stable".

There are three, faint, almost invisible, fire triangles in the card. On front of the green man, surrounding him and one behind him. All three are working on him; pushing, propelling, purging, propelling. Yet he appears to be care free, and not even present. Must be nice...he thinks to himself.

"To advance—that means Work. Patient, exhausting, thankless, often bewildering Work. Dear sister, if you would but Work! Work blindly, foolishly, misguidedly, it doesn’t matter in the end: Work in itself has absolute virtue." -Magick Without Tears

Further insights on The Fool - The active nature of Air is demonstrated in the following manner: The Green Man's arms are raised up above him, his feet are in the air protruding out of the frame of the card. He is suspended in the center of the card, in the center of everything else that is going on around him. It as if he is withdrawn from time, activity, circumstance. You can literally see it on his face. He's THERE but not there. Here but not HERE. So we can tack on suspension, withdrawal but not the type found in the Hermit and not the type of suspension that we find in Hanged Man neither. It's the instinctual inhalation and suspension of breathing when in the presence of something that takes your breath away. Baited breath. The Eureka Moment.

That type of withdrawal (the type we find in the Hermit) is much more directed and myopic. It's specific. This is a general type of withdrawal and depending on the circumstances it can be intentional though Not in response to circumstances like the Hanged Man. This is "CAUSED SUSPENSION" for the sake of "Caused Suspension" and thus, Inspiration.

Yet it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to draw a correlation of the Mercurial nature of Alchemical Air to its psychopomp-ish manifestation in the Hermit (which, by the way, also retains the Air-As- Mercury + Fire connection by way of it's attribution to the Hebrew letter Yod). Lots and lots going on here.

"To advance—that means Work. Patient, exhausting, thankless, often bewildering Work. Dear sister, if you would but Work! Work blindly, foolishly, misguidedly, it doesn’t matter in the end: Work in itself has absolute virtue." -Magick Without Tears